Start Local XWindow on Microsoft Windows Platform

In a UNIX network, it is quite natural to connect to an XWindows server from local machine. If your daily work is on a Windows machine, and occasionally do something requiring an XWindows, there are two ways provided by cygwin package, which is a simulator of UNIX environment on a Microsoft Windows platform.

You can start an X server on UNIX side, and use an X client on Windows side. The terminal is a true XWindows, as if you were working locally on the remote UNIX machine. This approach consume more resource on the server side, and sometims it is infeasible in case there are multiple users doing same thing in an organization.

Another way is to start up an X server on local Windows side. Cygwin provides an simulated UNIX environment. Then telnet to remote UNIX machine and direct the X connection back to the local one. Here are the detailed steps.

You should install cygwin + X11R6 package.

On your host 10.10.1.123, run

/usr/X11R6/bin/startxwin.bat

to start local XWindows.

In the shell, add remote host:

xhost 10.10.1.35

Then telnet to 10.10.1.35, assuming you are in csh, and set DISPLAY environment variable:

setenv DISPLAY 10.10.1.123:0.0

Then you can start any XWindows application. Do a test:

xterm &

You will see a UNIX shell window on your Windows desktop. An interesting feature of this approach is that, unlike the first method you get a window for everything on UNIX side, with the second method, each XWindow is dependent. They can be operated in same way as a Windows' window.